Anyone who has ever placed a telephone call to a service provider such as, for example, a utility, ticket ordering service or radio station has likely experienced the unpleasant and undesired response of a busy signal. This occurs because the existing communication network, which in most cases is the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN), has no mechanism to regulate the flow of such calls. As a result, the network and more particularly, the lines that serve the corresponding call response center of the service provider become overloaded. The caller is therefore unable to reach the desired call response center.
In emergency situations, such as, for example, E-911 calls, network overload poses an even greater danger in that an injured party may not be able to reach a Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP) to receive assistance. As those skilled in the art will recognize, the E-911 emergency response network in use today relies on dedicated trunk circuits from every end office (also called a central office switch or switching center) to regional routing switches and then onto the appropriate Public Safety Answering Point. This architecture is implemented by most regional Bell operating companies.
Typically, each end office is designed to have a minimum of two trunk circuits running from the end office to a regional 911 selective router. In more populated areas, some offices may have more than two trunk circuits depending upon traffic analysis. In any event, these two or more dedicated trunk circuits which are used for E-911 calls only, provide a guaranteed throughput of two simultaneous calls from each area. The trunk circuits also provide a threshold which limits the maximum number of simultaneous calls from a particular area. As readily seen, this limiting capability is necessary to prevent too many calls from an area flooding the PSAP lines, thereby preventing other E-911 calls originating from other areas from being routed to the call response center.
Because the current dedicated trunk network for E-911 calls that is part of the PSTN network is fixed, however, there is no way to adjust the allowed flow of E-911 calls from each area. Specifically, there is no way to adjust the allowed flow to take into consideration expected changes in call activity, i.e., increases or decreases based on times of day, days of the week, or in relationship to major public gatherings. Nor does the existing network permit real time changes in the allowed flow of calls to account for unexpected events such as, for example, mass emergencies i.e. earthquakes, fires, etc.
Historical 911 call data, however, shows that call patterns do exist. For example, during major sporting events, E-911 calls have been found to drop in the area immediately surrounding the sports arena. However, after an event concludes, emergency calls from those areas around the arena have been found to increase dramatically. Similarly, in urban areas, emergency calls from downtown nightclubs and restaurants have been found to be lower during weekday daylight hours, yet increase dramatically during evening hours, especially on the weekends. In short, emergency calls are known to increase in frequency from areas where the public concentrates, especially at places and times where alcohol and activity are involved. In all other areas, where there is less population, the frequency of emergency calls is less.
Unfortunately, the current dedicated trunk network described above, is fixed by the number of physical trunk circuits from each end office. Accordingly, there is no flexibility to allow and control variations in the amount of simultaneous calls from a particular area at a given time to a given call response center.
In short, there is no throttling mechanism provided in the prior art to regulate the flow of non E-911 calls to call response centers of a service provider. While throttling is provided with respect to E-911 calls, it is wholly deficient for the reasons discussed above.
Consequently, a need exists for a method and system for regulating the flow of calls from a calling party to a service provider having one or more call response centers. Such a method and system should be capable of being implemented using the public network switching and signalling and provide dynamic threshold call regulating control to allow a customer to pre-schedule different thresholds of current active calls for each area for different days, times, and events. Such a method and system should further provide an administrator the ability to make real time changes in the above described thresholds to account for unexpected events such as, for example, mass emergencies and other events which result in substantially increased or decreased call activity.